Getting started with express in nodejs - FriendlyUsers Tech Blog

JavaScript’s global scope is like a public toilet. You can’t avoid going in there, but try to limit your contact with surfaces when you do. --- Dmitry Baranovskiy

To install Node.js on Windows, follow these steps:

Go to the Node.js website: https://nodejs.org/
Click the “Download” button to download the latest version of Node.js for Windows.
Once the download is complete, run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to install Node.js on your computer.
Once the installation is complete, open a command prompt or terminal and type node -v to verify that Node.js was installed correctly and to see which version you have installed.

You can also use the following instructions to install Node.js using the Chocolatey package manager:

Open a command prompt or terminal and run the following command:
```
choco install nodejs
```
Once the installation is complete, type node -v to verify that Node.js was installed correctly and to see which version you have installed.

Alternatively, you can use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to install and run Node.js on Windows. To do this, follow these steps:

Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature on your computer. You can do this by opening the “Turn Windows features on or off” settings, scrolling down to the “Windows Subsystem for Linux” option, and checking the box next to it. Click “OK” to save the changes and enable WSL.
Once WSL is enabled, open the Microsoft Store and search for “Linux”. Select a Linux distribution, such as Ubuntu, and click “Get” to install it on your computer.
Once the Linux distribution is installed, open a command prompt or terminal and type wsl to launch the Linux environment.
In the Linux environment, follow the instructions for your specific distribution to install Node.js. For example, on Ubuntu, you can use the following command to install the latest version of Node.js:

    sudo apt-get install nodejs

Once the installation is complete, you can use the node command to run Node.js in the Linux environment.

Alternatively, you can also use a package manager like apt on Ubuntu or brew on macOS to install Node.js. For example, on Ubuntu, you can use the following commands:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install nodejs

On macOS, you can use the following commands:

    brew update
    brew install node

Express

Express is a popular web application framework for building back-end applications with Node.js. It provides a simple and flexible way to create web servers and web applications, and includes a variety of features and tools that make it easier to develop and maintain back-end applications.

Some of the key features of Express include:

A simple, lightweight, and flexible core that makes it easy to build web applications A routing system that allows you to define different routes for different HTTP methods and URLs
Middleware support, which allows you to define functions that are executed before or after a request is handled by a route Built-in support for rendering HTML templates using popular template engines like Pug and EJS
A large ecosystem of third-party libraries and plugins that can be easily integrated into Express applications.
Express is widely used for building back-end applications because of its simplicity, flexibility, and rich feature set. It provides a solid foundation for building scalable and maintainable back-end applications with Node.js.

Here is an example of a simple Express server:

In order to test save the file to app.js
use yarn add express or npm install express, this should create a package.json file to track dependencies.
run node app.js

const express = require("express");

const app = express();

app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello, world!");
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log("Server listening on port 3000");
});

In this example, the Express app is created using the express function, and a route is defined for the / path that sends the string “Hello, world!” as a response. The app is then set to listen for incoming requests on port 3000. When a request is received on the / path, the specified response will be sent back to the client.

To add a start command to the package.json file that will run the app.js file, you can add a scripts property to the package.json file, and specify the start command as follows:

{
  "name": "my-node-app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node app.js"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    // Dependencies go here
    "express": "^5.0.0"
  }
}

In this example, the scripts property is added to the package.json file, and the start command is defined as node app.js. This means that when the start script is run (for example, by running npm start or yarn start), the app.js file will be executed using the node command.

Once the scripts property has been added to the package.json file, you can run the start script by using the npm run or yarn run command, followed by the name of the script. For example, to run the start script with npm, you can run the following command:

npm run start

To create an Express server that hosts static files, you can use the express.static middleware function. This function is part of the Express framework, which is a popular web application framework for Node.js.

Here is an example of how to use the express.static middleware to host static files:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.use(express.static('public'));

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server listening on port 3000');
});

In this example, the express.static middleware is used to serve all files in the public directory. This means that any file in the public directory can be accessed by a client by requesting the file’s path relative to the public directory. For example, if there is a file named index.html in the public directory, a client can access it by making a request to http://your-server-domain/index.html.

You can also specify a different directory to serve static files from by passing the directory path as an argument to the express.static function. For example:

app.use(express.static('my-static-files'));

This will serve all files in the my-static-files directory.

It’s important to note that the express.static middleware only serves static files. It does not handle dynamic requests, such as those made with a form or an AJAX request. To handle dynamic requests, you will need to use additional middleware or route handlers.

References

This content came from a book I generated using chatGPT and a lot of editing.

View on the source material see amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSL14M71

For a free copy, please view https://friendlyuser.github.io/assets/pdfs/introToJs.pdf